Hello Rick,

I actually have the following books -
1) VBA for Dummies
2) Excel 2002 Formulas - Walkenbach
3) Excel 2002 Power Programming with VBA - Walkenbach

I have written simple VBA macros, but I realize there is a great deal more I
need to learn. My company owns 25 medical facilities in California, and I
have convinced my boss to invest in my department to develop an application
with Visual Studio .NET into a SQL database.

Thanks
Ruan



"Rick" wrote in message
...
The way to get started, is to get some easy-to-learn books
and be persistent. It takes years to learn programming.
No matter how hard or how boring at times, you keep at
it. All of the sudden, it starts making sense.

You might first start with one of Excel workbooks that
contain formulas, that you have. As a fun project, try to
convert it to a program with VBA. I'm sure a lot of
people here would help you get through the bottlenecks.

People make fun of me when I say this, but I admit to
using one of the yellow Dummies books. I first was using
the Learn-VBA-In-21-Days book, and then found the Dummies
book (Visual Basic 3 for Dummies) filled in the gaps for
me. I'm self-taught and now am very advanced. I got
there by swallowing my pride and starting with the most
simple books.

Rick

-----Original Message-----
Rick,
I am one of the guys that do the formulas that get really
complicated, etc.
They work but I feel that I would be much better off
using VBA--except I
have never gotten started learning it.
I've looked at books, etc., but they are all fairly
advanced and I just
didn't want to put the time in.
What would u suggest to get started in VBA on a real
gradual learning curve?
Tx,
S
"Rick" wrote in
message
...
Hi,

I've seen some people do nothing but use formulas, that
are nearly as complicated as programming (in a limited
sense with lots of nested if statements etc.). But, I
won't hesitate to do all my work with VBA. I abandoned
the formula method of Excel automation years ago (except
in some cases where it's just convenient etc.).

Once you have the VBA code written in place, it's just a
matter of having the computer loop it through from one
end
of the range to another. You can then do incredibly
more
and more...where you'll find that it seems like that
there
are no limits...just your imagination. The computer
processing speed and amount of data one has, also has to
be considered whether you want VBA programming or
formulas.

Once you learn and use VBA on a regular basis, I think
you'll find it much better. Anyway, that is my personal
preference.

It will be interesting to hear other responses. I'm
sure
everyone has a different answer with what works best for
them.

Rick

-----Original Message-----
Hello,

I have an excel workbook that has a worksheet that
consists of 30 columns
with 1000 rows.

One of my main columns of input is the Admit Date of a
Patient. From the
Admit Date, various Due Dates are generated at specific
points in time
(ie.14 days, 30 days, 60 days etc)

So, I would have a formula as follows -
=IF(AND
(Patient_Name<"",Admit_Date<""),Admit_Date+30,"" )

My question is, which direction is more efficient -
1) Creating formulas that are copied for 1000 rows or
2) Creating VBA code that only enters the result once
an
input has been
entered in the Admit Date column.

I am trying to figure out ways to reduce my 10 Mbs
excel
workbook.

Thanks
Ruan


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